Up ahead, a farm tractor was on the highway moving between fields, slowing traffic. Billy Ray waited for an opening and goosed the Chevy. Conversation waned as the miles ticked by, each man deep in thought.
On the outskirts of Woodward, Lester said. “I thought that Sanchez didn’t look all that bad considering what he’s been through. I was surprised at how well he was talking. All those prayers from his mama probably didn’t hurt.”
“Yeah, right,” Billy Ray grunted—the skepticism obvious in his tone.
“Sounds like you don’t put much stock in the power of prayer, Billy Ray.”
“That would be a fair assessment.”
Lester let it sit a moment and then, “I’m guessing you have some opinions on the subject? We got a lot more road ahead; let me hear ‘em.”
But it was five miles later before Billy Ray spoke again, “When I think of prayer, I think about all the parents, the wives, the kids, the churches, and everyone else that prayed for the guys I saw killed in Afghanistan. What good did prayer do for them? They died. Prayer didn’t stop the bullet or the RPG that took ‘em out. It didn’t stop the suicide bombers from dressing up like Afghan soldiers and walking into places where our guys were trying to help the Afghan people, and blowing them up, men, women, and kids in the name of Allah. All those people back home, praying their butts off. What did it get them? Nothing. What I always wondered, just how did they think a prayer would stop a bullet? Was the hand of God supposed to appear from out the blue and snatch that bullet up? Or maybe just deflect it a little? Make it miss? How does that work anyway? Or is it some kind of ESP, a sensation urging a soldier to duck just before some Haji pulls the trigger? Is that it? I don’t get it. Right here in the good old U.S.A., we got people praying every Sunday in thousands of churches, praying for everything imaginable, praying to be saved, praying to be shown the way, praying a storm in the Gulf of Mexico doesn’t grow to be a hurricane, praying their roast in the oven doesn’t burn before they get home. Why in the hell would we expect such special consideration on a tiny blue dot in a galaxy amid billions of galaxies from a force that allegedly created such a mind-boggling space? What kind of delusional thinking is that? Time and again, I’ve heard stories of people praying that the path of a tornado would change, spare them the house and property they worked so hard for, and you know, sometimes it did. And they will look you in the eye and tell you that they’re prayer was answered. The fact that their neighbor’s home down the road was blown to smithereens somehow doesn’t figure into it. Did the neighbor not pray hard enough? Did he not tithe his ten percent to the church? Did he have just one sin too many to be overlooked? Or was his prayer—assuming he had to be praying about seventy miles an hour as the twister got closer—not heard to begin with? Does the prayer channel go down like the Internet; cannot display this God? That’s another thing, how are all those prayers, worldwide, received and acted upon in a timely manner? Imagine the number of prayers sent in a single day. Hell, the Muslims alone pray five times a day. Multiply that times the number of Muslims, what is it, about a billion and half of them now? So we’re talking around seven and a half billion prayers a day? And that’s just the Muslims. You got your Catholics, and your Protestants, and all those guys in orange robes living in temples praying all day long. You gonna tell me that all those prayers are heard and acted on? Give me a break.”
“Uh, Billy Ray,” Lester said, glancing at the deputy. “I didn’t mean to push your buttons but…”
“You asked for my thoughts Sheriff, and I’m handing them ‘em out. I got more.”
Lester sighed, “Go ahead, get it off your chest.”
“So you tell me, how are all these prayers dealt with and answered? Which get top priority? Logic—if you can use logic and religion in the same sentence—would tell us that the more religious would get the nod, a sort of go to the head of the line kind of thing. What about those in imminent danger such as when a car in the other lane crosses the centerline? Let’s say that the family of that person in peril has prayed for his or her safe trip and fully believes the driver is in safe hands, protected in some way and now…big problems. With the two cars about to meet at a combined speed of say 140 miles an hour, that prayer needs answering damn fast, wouldn’t you say? What happens now? Does a mysterious force divert one car or the other? Must not work so good ‘cause I read the other day that, worldwide, there are over one million traffic deaths every year. Don’t know, but I’d bet at least a hundred thousand of them probably prayed, or were prayed for, on the exact day their life ended. And yet we keep doing it, praying, expecting God to keep an eye on every single car on the road, watching out for the chosen few. Here’s another one…”
“I think I get your line of thought, Billy Ray. Let me just say this…”
“I’m not done. You’ll get your turn,” Billy Ray snapped.
Lester nodded, “I’ll wait.”
“My mom belonged to a church all her life. The church had this practice they call a prayer chain. The way it worked was when a church member was ill or had an operation coming up, the person at the head of the chain was notified that a prayer was needed. That person would call the next person down the list—the chain—and ask that they say a prayer for poor old Aunt Matilda when she has her gall bladder surgery in the morning. That person called the next one on their list until all were notified. I asked mom once, what happens if no one answers the phone, is the chain broken? Does it mean somebody (Aunt Matilda) is gonna die? Mom never did answer that one. Thinking back on it, I often wondered exactly how those prayers were going to help. Would something guide the surgeon’s hand? Or would he hear a voice in his head, ‘No, don’t cut there, over a little, oops too far, back a little, yeah, that’s it, right there.’ Is that how prayer works Sheriff? Cause if it is, I like to talk to the God responsible. I’d like him to explain to me why my buddies died in the war because I know damn well that people were praying for them. I want to hear why they had to die and why all those people in the World Trade Center had to die while some twisted religious minds screamed ‘Allah Akbar.’”
The cab of the pickup went silent, the sound of the tires on pavement and the drone of the fan pumping cool air, the only noise. As the pickup topped a hill, two turkey vultures scrambled from a road-killed raccoon, their great black wings beating the air, straining for altitude, avoiding certain death.
Five miles out of Boise City, Lester said, “I can’t answer your questions, Billy Ray. I doubt there’s anybody that can, not to your satisfaction anyway. Sounds to me like you’re looking for proof that prayer works but, as you’ve pointed out, there really isn’t any. Sure there’s times when folks believe their prayers were answered and if not, well, they say something like ‘God works in mysterious ways.’ All that means is that we don’t understand the process and maybe never will. It all comes down to faith, Billy Ray, simple as it sounds. But I can tell you this. The mind is a wonderful and complex thing, and just like prayer, no one is exactly sure how it works either. Yes, the doctors can tell you if they poke here and poke there on a living brain, certain things happen but they have no idea about the power of the mind to heal, maybe someday, but not yet. You talked about Aunt Matilda. I don’t know if anyone expects a force to help that doctor through the operation, but I bet the fact that all those people praying for her made Matilda feel better about it. So who are we to say that her peace of mind won’t play a part in how successful that operation is?
“You talked about the war, the soldiers. I didn’t serve in Vietnam, I had a heart murmur, but I had lots of friends who did. Like your buddies, some of them died, too many. I had one pal, name was Joe Busey, he was a POW, a prisoner of war. Had him in the Hanoi Hilton, same one as John McCain. He lived through that hellhole. When he got home, I had a chance to talk with him over a couple of beers. What I was most curious about was how he managed to stay alive, to endure the punishment, the sickness, the lack of food and sanitation. ‘Joe,’ I said, ‘how the hell did yo
u do it?’ Know what he told me, Billy Ray? You already know don’t you? He said it was his faith, his prayers. That’s how he managed to make it one day at a time. That’s where his strength came from. Joe tried to go on, explain it better, but I heard his voice crack and that was the end of it. But I had my answer. That’s the power of prayer, Billy Ray. That’s how prayer works.”
Chapter 33
An orange glow filled the evening sky where an Oklahoma sun had quit for the day and was moving on to points west. The 2-way radio crackled to life, the sudden voice making both men jump.
“Dispatch to Sheriff! You out there Sheriff?” Nelda was back on duty. She sounded excited.
“I’m here Dispatch. What’s going on?”
“Uh, uh, Sheriff, it’s a, a, it’s a no-shitter.”
Lester and Billy Ray grinned at each other.
“What is Nelda?” Lester asked. “Calm down and tell me about it.”
“Imogene Parker, she just phoned in. She’s killed her husband Albert…with a shotgun. That’s what she told me.”
The grins in the truck vanished. “What?” Lester said, incredulous.
“That’s not all. She said Albert killed Melissa. That’s why she shot him.”
Lester squeezed the mike, his knuckles white. “She said Albert killed Melissa?”
“That’s what she said,”
“Jesus Christ!” Billy Ray said.
Lester blew air and hung his head, then; “We’re about twenty minutes from the farm. Let’s start an ambulance that way, just in case.”
“Okay, but you better hurry Sheriff. Imogene said she’s gonna kill herself too.”
Billy Ray hit the lights and siren and mashed the gas pedal to the floor.
Lester sank down in his seat, head back, the despair hitting him like a sudden cold front out of Colorado. “First no-shitter in Cimarron County in a hundred years and it has to be a dead girl,” he said.
“What about Albert?” Billy ray asked.
“Albert doesn’t count,” Lester said.
*****
Imogene Parker cradled the phone and looked at it for a moment, wondering if she’d made a mistake, calling Nelda to tell her about Albert. It put a time limit on her plan. Someone would be banging on her door very soon.
Sunday, the morning after blowing her husband nearly in two, Imogene had stayed home, fearing to go to church, knowing that what she’d done would be written all over her face. The preacher would notice of course, maybe point her out.
“We have a sinner in our midst, right there in the seventh row, wearing that gray dress. She has broken the ultimate Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ and will now spend her eternity in hell.” The entire congregation would turn and stare. She couldn’t deal with that. But the deep need for some kind of salvation ate her soul, some divine justification for pulling those triggers.
Instead of church, she had watched a couple of the preachers on TV, hoping that would do. And yet, Imogene felt that somehow, despite what the Bible said, she had done proper. Albert was an evil man and the devil was in him…or was. Yes, now that she thought about it, it was a reasonable thing what she had done. After all, no Christian man would rape and kill a woman, much less a little girl. Only someone possessed by Beelzebub himself could do a thing like that. But the more Imogene tried to justify her action with God and the Commandments, somewhere in the back of her rational mind, the cold facts of criminal law gnawed at her belly. No matter that Albert deserved what he got; the end result would not only be the biblical hell but something close to it, the iron bars of a prison cell. The thought of being locked up with all those Godless women, those sinners, for the rest of her life was simply more than Imogene could fathom. Dying and going to Heaven to be with her sweet daughter seemed a lot better than going to the penitentiary. But would God forgive her for taking her own life…and Albert’s? Imogene wasn’t a hundred percent sure, in fact not sure at all, and that’s what was bothering her now. Impulsively, she bowed her head and closed her eyes for a silent prayer.
God, could you give me a sign? Show me the way?
But there was no omen, no unusual sounds, no ethereal vision, no shining light from above, only the tick of the old clock from down the hall and the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the lacy curtains on a quiet September day.
A few hours earlier, she prepared herself by taking a long bath in the tub and putting on clean underwear. She owned only two going-to-church dresses that she alternated every other Sunday. She chose her newest, the one with blue and white trim, and plucked it from the hanger. It had been her favorite ever since the preacher had commented on it and told her how nice she looked. At the mirror, she held the dress in front of her, considering.
She shook her head. “No, no sense ruining a perfectly good dress,” she said aloud and returned it to the closet. This time she opted for her old blue bathrobe, worn and tattered at the cuffs and hem, but comfortable, and slipped it on. She made a couple passes through her hair with a brush and took one more look in the mirror. She noticed that two buttons at the top were undone and showed a bit of cleavage. She quickly took care of that.
Back in the kitchen, Imogene double-checked her work, her final chore, one that she’d begun just after sunrise. The shotgun was in place, reloaded, and lashed to the table legs with a couple of dust rags. The double barrels were at an angle from the floor, pointed up and in the general direction of the top of the refrigerator. The hammers were pulled back and cocked. A broom handle with the end squared off—via Albert’s trim saw—lay on the chair. The act of pushing the trigger with the broom wouldn’t take but a second or two, that wasn’t the concern. She would easily have the time to do it if someone should come by and try to stop her. It was the thought (the sin?) of her suicide keeping her out of Heaven. That was the real worry. Was that in the Bible? She couldn’t remember reading anything about it and was pretty sure the preacher hadn’t mentioned it. By now, the Sheriff would be on his way. Decision time.
She took a long look around the room. Everything was as it should be. The dishes were done and the sink was clean. The flowers in the window were watered, the floor swept. She sighed and then sat in the chair and leaned forward until the cold barrels of the shotgun touched her throat, the shortened broomstick in her lap. Once again, Imogene closed her eyes and asked for forgiveness, praying for absolution before Sheriff Morrison came bursting through her front door. She decided she would stay in the kitchen chair, just as she was, and pray until she received a sign from above…or the Sheriff arrived, one or the other.
*****
Red and blue lights reflected briefly off the Pirate’s Den as the Sheriff’s pickup screamed past, siren blaring. Billy Ray braked hard at the road to the Parker farm and fishtailed the pickup as it hit loose gravel. He killed the flashing lights and siren, flicked the headlights to high beam, caught a red reflector on the Parker mailbox, and turned in. A single light shown from the kitchen window on the east side of the house.
“Slow and easy, Billy Ray,” Lester said as they trotted to the portico. Billy Ray rapped lightly on the door.
A quivering voice came back, “Who is it?”
“It’s me Mrs. Parker, Sheriff Morrison. Okay if I come in?”
Imogene used both hands on the broom handle pushed against one trigger of the old Belgian shotgun. The movement of the trigger released the firing pin which then hit the primer. The primer made a spark that ignited the main powder and in a fraction of a second, converted it to gas. The expanding gas pushed the wadding behind the buckshot down the barrel of the gun at roughly 1200 feet per second, more than enough force to decapitate Imogene Parker. The roar caught the lawmen by surprise and they flattened themselves against the side of the house on either side of the front door. Billy Ray pulled his gun. Lester waited a moment, slowly turned the knob, pushed on the door, and quickly stepped back. With no more shots fired, both men peeked in at the same time.
“Good Lord,” Lester said. Billy Ray
had seen his share of blood in the Army but this was mind-numbing and while Lester had dealt with death a number of times, traffic accidents, charred victims of a fire (or crispy critters as one heartless cop called them) a headless corpse from a shotgun blast was a horrible first. It took the Sheriff several moments for the shock of the gruesome scene to subside and his brain to function again. A siren in the distance broke his trance.
“Ambulance,” Billy Ray said.
Lester nodded. “You talk to ‘em. I’ll check the rest of the house. Billy Ray stepped outside and took a deep breath of air, trying to get his stomach under control. Lester took one more glace at Imogene’s remains and the blood spattered wall before racing up the stairs to Melissa’s bedroom, his heart pounding from exertion and the fear of what he might see. He flipped the ceiling light on; the bed was made, the room in order. Nothing had changed.
Back on the main floor, he went down the hall and pushed on the first door he came to. The odor hit Lester like a two by four. The room light revealed a mass of tattered flesh and dark blood saturating the bed. Albert stunk like a dead catfish lying in the hot sun. Lester felt for his blue bandana from his back pocket, covered his mouth and nose, and did a quick look-see from both sides of the bed, then wished he hadn’t. It was a preview of nightmares to come.
Lester joined Billy Ray in the front yard where he was talking to the ambulance crew. It was the same pair that had worked the Sanchez wreck. Lester remembered the cute EMT with the short and spiky red hair.
“Albert?” Billy Ray asked.
“Yep, he’s in there. Bedroom. Dead.”
“Melissa?”
“No.”
The red-haired girl spoke. “The deputy filled us in. We’ve never worked anything like this before. Most of our calls are little old ladies that have fallen down and can’t get up. We get cuts from chain saws and broken bones when the man of the house falls off a ladder. Not that many wrecks either but this, jeez. Okay to go inside or do you need to preserve the scene?”
Fraidy Hole: A Sheriff Lester P. Morrison Novel Page 26
